In presenting an overall return, it would be worth noting that some college degrees aren't intended to make a positive ROI. You don't get a divinity degree, or a literature degree, expecting to get rich, or even make a positive return. You expect to learn things that enrich your quality of life.
We could do a better job of telling students that -- and we should be investigating why it costs so much money to provide those educations.
College is rather a pig in a poke for everybody: it's a lot of money for people who know very little about their lives. I would like to see a lot of things be different, including making it easier for people to take a few years off without treating them like pariahs in school. And I'd like to see a lot of jobs stop requiring college degrees, or accept people who have unrelated degrees but nonetheless have shown via college that they are willing to do the basics of turning in assignments, write coherent papers, etc. regardless of degree.
These estimates should be a topic of study and discussion for all high school students but sadly there are a number of institutional incentives pushing in the other direction, to try and dissuade children from what might be considered “informed consent” when taking out loans and deciding on a major and post graduate specialization. In my experience those in higher sociology-economic strata are much better informed. The lack of information and quality guidance for many others is a societal problem. We share the costs and consequences of these poorly informed decisions in multiple ways. Some terrible thinking suggests we make college free for all, without addressing this fundamental information gap, an idea that would essentially pour gasoline on what’s already a 4 alarm fire of student loans that burden workers who are unable to contribute much to productivity and spend their life struggling to catch up.
We could do a better job of telling students that -- and we should be investigating why it costs so much money to provide those educations.
College is rather a pig in a poke for everybody: it's a lot of money for people who know very little about their lives. I would like to see a lot of things be different, including making it easier for people to take a few years off without treating them like pariahs in school. And I'd like to see a lot of jobs stop requiring college degrees, or accept people who have unrelated degrees but nonetheless have shown via college that they are willing to do the basics of turning in assignments, write coherent papers, etc. regardless of degree.